A Criticism on Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks
This paper was written for COLT-381: Psychoanalysis and the Arts in Fall 2023. It seeks to evaluate the longevity of Black philosopher Frantz Fanon’s book Black Skin, White Masks.
Although the 1952 book Black Skin, White Masks by Afro-Caribbean philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon revolutionized anti-racism and anti-colonialism thought during the 20th century, the valid criticisms of Fanon’s book must be addressed from a modern perspective. Certainly, a lot of the references and calls to action and liberation within Black Skin were based on Fanon’s own lived experiences, specifically because he grew up in the French colony of Martinique during the early 1900s. Throughout his life, Fanon made it a point to not support any French colonial efforts, even through efforts as indirect as working in a French hospital. His writings calling for colonial liberation have inspired other freedom movements, including in Palestine and South Africa. To begin, the way Fanon illustrates Blackness may not be the same for other Black people, which can potentially lead to perpetuating harmful stereotypes or overlooking other aspects of identity, thereby harming the individual experience of the Black person as a whole. Next, since Fanon’s writings are a product of living during the 20th century, his ideology may be a little outdated today because of the modernization of racism and colonialism. Similarly, Fanon has been criticized for his portrayal of women because he uses sexist language, reinforcing the patriarchal structure of society, and fails to fully address the differences in experience between Black men and women.
Fanon’s portrayal of the Black experience implies the same lived experience for all Black people, which can serve to confine individual Black people to negative stereotypes or erase a multitude of perspectives. In the first chapter, Fanon discusses Black people and how they code-switch to fit a specific linguistic norm whether they are around other Black people versus white people. About the Black man, Fanon writes, “There is nothing comparable when it comes to the black man. He has no culture, no civilization, and no ‘long historical past.’... Whether he likes it or not, the black man has to wear the livery the white man has fabricated for him” (17). To Fanon, the history of Black people revolves around the white perception of history, which is why terms like the “colonizer” versus the “colonized” are so powerful when referring to the power imbalance between the two groups. However, the issue is that Fanon’s word choice, through phrases such as “for him” or “has to,” throughout the book implies a shared, universal experience for Black people, and that all Black people have felt Fanon’s sentiments of isolation or inferiority. As a result, Black people have less agency in how to feel about their own encounters with racism, and not every Black person has felt the effects of colonialism, so a lot of Fanon’s arguments do not apply to those people. Critics of Black Skin have commented that Fanon tends to use overly specific examples when trying to illustrate his points, making him seem essentialist. Essentialism can be defined as “the idea that people and things have ‘natural’ characteristics that are inherent and unchanging” (Helfer). For example, Fanon writes, “It is understandable that the black man’s first action is a reaction, and since he is assessed with regard to his degree of assimilation, it is understandable too why the returning Antillean speaks only French: because he is striving to underscore the rift that has occurred” (Fanon 19). Fanon uses the history of the Antilleans as an example for how colonialism in general forces the colonized to assimilate and adapt to that culture in order to imitate the desired privilege and experience of the colonizer; however, this example may not be true for all groups and generations of Black people, especially worldwide. Certainly, as a survival tactic, the Antilleans assimilating to French culture by speaking only French with the exception of Creole to servants is valid, but within a more generalized context, this example is not true for many Black experiences. Fanon’s claims may be true for other Afro-Caribbean individuals like himself, but their experiences living on a colonized island definitely differ from say, a Black person growing up during the 21st century in an African-American community in Atlanta or Harlem, or even in a small, predominantly white town. Obviously, within an island like Fanon’s birthplace, Martinique, where the commonly spoken language was French because of French colonization, the Black people there attempted to appeal to their white “superiors” by speaking French with an accent like white Frenchmen, but not all Black people were subjugated in that way. Fanon argues that Black people attempt to distance themselves from the “colonial gaze” by putting on airs of white people, or of “civilization.” One such instance is of “The ‘Negro’ … the savage, whereas the student is civilized” (51). This statement shows the extent of Fanon’s feelings of disconnect, which he feels encompasses the entire Black community but ultimately overlooks the multitude of identities within the community, such as sexuality, gender, class, or even geographic region. Within the Black community, Fanon fails to address the power imbalances that occur because of gender, class, or even homophobia, all because he singularly focuses on the shared experience of oppression; Fanon ignores the various identities that contribute to intersectionality and, for instance, how a Black person can both be a part of the LGBTQ+ community, Black, and a woman, all at once. To conclude, Fanon’s writing can be interpreted as essentialist because of his tendency to homogenize the Black experience as something negative and alienating.
By the same vein, Fanon’s interpretation of racism and colonialism of Black people during his lifetime is vastly dissimilar in comparison to modern-day racism and colonialism. To begin, there is still a segregation issue in the U.S. that stems directly from the ‘60s, when the U.S. began to desegregate schools – the U.S. was simultaneously segregating metropolitan areas, or school districts, affecting the children in those cities. Cities in the U.S. were more segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990. This is a result of socioeconomic disparities between races in metropolitan areas, especially since white people have held an advantageous position over POC in the U.S. for years, with indentured servitude or slavery targeting POC for centuries. Of course, the U.S. made segregation illegal, but there are thousands of schools across the country with a high white population and a low POC population in schools in wealthier areas, while in less privileged areas, the student enrollment is generally Black and brown students; consequently, while about 67% of white high school graduates went straight to college in 2020, only 54% of Black high school graduates attended college afterward, which can be attributed to an increasing wealth gap in the States. Since Fanon grew up in a French colony during the early 1900s, he was definitely used to the complete segregation of schools so the concept of desegregation just a few decades later would have been unprecedented for him. It is safe to say that children that are racial minorities at their predominantly white schools today feel alienated in a way that is similar to Fanon’s description in Black Faces, but their feelings will never be the same since there is such a difference in factors and environments that changes the way racism affects these two groups. From experience, it is true that there is usually a period of self-hatred in a young person of color’s life that is defined by the desire to possess Eurocentric features – to fit in, seem beautiful or attractive, and to earn others’ respect easily just from face value. Unfortunately, even though it is possible to not become completely overwhelmed by the longing for Eurocentric features and the privileged lifestyle afforded by those features, it is extremely difficult to unlearn that toxic mindset and appreciate one’s own culture and ethnic features; most POC are still unable to shake the effect of that racism, even as subtly microaggressive as it is to praise Eurocentric features as the beauty standard. Admittedly, Fanon articulated this sentiment well in Black Skin, even though this issue was long after his time. In summary, modern racism, with its multitude of forms and indirect influence, was unprecedented for Fanon to accommodate for in Black Skin.
To continue, even though the 13th Amendment of 1865 abolished slavery in the United States, there was a loophole that allowed for essentially modern-day slavery, making slavery, or involuntary servitude, a legal punishment for crimes today. According to a report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), incarcerated people in the U.S. are responsible for at least $11 billion in goods and services every year; however, their amount of work does not coincide with the mere pennies they receive as wages. Additionally, the U.S. has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, with more than 800,000 of those incarcerated being employed in prison. The U.S.’ prison-industrial complex is a huge problem today; as a result of former presidents Nixon and Reagan’s aggressive policies targeting crime which disproportionately affected Black and brown POC, corporations were incentivized to run private prisons for financial benefit, thus putting prisoners to work with the goal of keeping them incarcerated as long as possible to profit off their labor. This forced, captive labor was nothing Fanon could have anticipated when writing Black Masks since the plights he describes are based on the alienation he felt from his culture in relation to the oppressive nature of the colonizer, which is a less common sentiment nowadays because colonialism in today’s age is less explicitly obvious. In conclusion, a loophole in the 13th Amendment still gave rise to modern-day slavery through involuntary servitude, forcing incarcerated prisoners to do labor for low wages for the benefit of huge corporations.
Although Fanon goes into great detail about the psychological effects of colonialism on people like himself, his analysis fits the narrative of the Black man during the 20th century, making it challenging to apply his ideas of decolonization to today’s world. Even though the strong powers of the colonialism era have lost most of their colonies, modern colonialism exhibits itself through economic dependence, the loss of cultural identity due to assimilation, and difficulty attaining resources. Since the effects of colonialism today are vastly different than they were during Fanon’s lifetime, there is less reason for justifying the violence Fanon was advocating for in order to achieve liberation in Black Masks. Fanon claims that reacting with violence to the colonizer will allow Black people to rehumanize themselves not just in the eyes of the colonizer, but also to their own self-perception. Fortunately, Fanon only justifies using violence in case the colonizers refuse to listen during peaceful communication, and he places priority on the safety of innocent people. It is interesting to read Fanon’s generally anti-violence sentiment since, at the time, many colonies were resorting to violent uprisings to attempt their own liberation.
Fanon has been critiqued for his negative, sexist depiction of women especially with the Oedipus complex, which upholds the toxic patriarchal structure, and ignoring Black women’s experiences in comparison to Black men. Yes, Fanon is more knowledgeable about the Black man’s experience, but his writing is disproportionately centralized around the disconnect Black men feel from their heritage, and when he does mention Black women, he refers to them using less-than-positive language. It is understandable if Fanon does not want to speak for the Black woman experience, but ultimately, Fanon ends up referring to women as a tool to illustrate his point about Black men being subjugated to the colonial concept of white superiority and the Eurocentric beauty standard. Fanon mentions Jean Veneuse, a Black man from Antilles that grew up in Bordeaux, France, as an example to explain the Black man’s desire for white women. In continuation from Fanon’s aforementioned generalization of the unfortunate Black male experience, he writes, “[Jean Veneuse] knows that furious at this humiliating ostracism, the common mulatto and black man have only one thought on their mind as soon as they set foot in Europe: to gratify their appetite for white women” (51). In addition to educated Black men wanting to set themselves apart from their less “civilized” counterparts, they also want to be with white women to imitate white male privilege, something they want to achieve. Fanon argues that white women are only attracted to Black men because they like the “primitiveness,” which again reinforces the harmful stereotype that Black men or people in general are uncivilized, but simultaneously in an exotic, interesting way that serves to further dehumanize Black people as a sort of zoo animal. Fanon implies that even when there is mutual attraction between the white woman and the Black man, they are not on equal footing within their relationship because the Black man is an object of desire for the white woman, someone who wants to escape the comfortably safe constraints of white society and rebel against her father’s wishes in an Oedipal sense. Conversely, the Black man desires the white woman because he subconsciously desires the white father and all the privilege he possesses as the forbidden object. Certainly, Freud’s Oedipus complex is an interesting theory, but many psychoanalysts, including Deleuze and Guattari in their work Anti-Oedipus, have criticized it for its lack of evidence and also its tendency to confine people to a rigid sense of binary gender identity and also heteronormativity.
To continue, Fanon addresses the Black female experience only in relation to the white man. Much like how he objectifies the white woman as an object of desire for the Black man, he views the Black woman through the lens of a white man: as an object of desire. Through the lens of a white man, Fanon fetishizes the Black woman. He minimizes the Black woman’s own, personal wants and needs to only the feelings of “recognition, and acceptance into a community that seemed impenetrable… Overnight the mulatto girl had gone from the rank of slave to that of master” (40). Furthermore, he explains that all the Black woman wants is acceptance into the white community, which is why she is attracted to the white man. In summary, Fanon does not go into depth about the Black woman and her experiences, and when he does mention Black women, he problematically refers to them only through the lens of a white man’s desire.
First, Fanon’s portrayal of Blackness simplifies the Black experience, rendering the multitude of identities that intersect with being Black insignificant, potentially reinforcing stereotypes or overshadowing the individual experience of a Black person. Next, Fanon’s analysis regarding racism and colonialism in Black Skin, White Masks were a result of living in a colony during the 20th century, so his work is slightly outdated because of newer, modern issues since then. Similarly, Fanon has been criticized for his failure to expand on the shortcomings of the Black female experience, going as far to only portray them as an object of desire for white men, and vice versa for white women and the Black man. However, despite these criticisms, Black Faces revolutionized critical thought against racism and colonialism, and its influence is still obvious today and will continue to have a long lasting impact.
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